Glukhovsky thought that was a story that belonged in the twentieth century. Everything is moving in the direction of a dictatorship.”īut he didn’t predict a war like this, where tanks and missiles lay waste to vast swathes of land, where soldiers are digging trenches and fighting for every meter of territory, where civilians with their hands tied behind their backs are shot dead, where every Russian wakes up each morning to the possibility of receiving their call-up. At the same time, people’s few remaining freedoms become more restricted. And what was worse, that it was laying the groundwork for future actions: “They have to find a justification for the annexation, that is the task of propaganda, which has to invent bigger and bigger lies.

No lives have been lost, either Russian or Ukrainian.” Glukhovsky countered that the annexation had still broken international law. Despite Glukhovsky’s training as a political journalist and although he saw the trouble approaching, he says that the war took him by surprise.Īfter the annexation of Crimea, he argued with relatives, who bought into the propaganda message and refused to denounce the annexation, saying, “It’s not an issue. The first novel was published in 2007, when Putin had been in power for seven years.

They take place in a future version of Russia, after a nuclear apocalypse. Glukhovsky’s Metro novel series and the computer games based on them have sold millions of copies and made the 43-year-old famous. In the lead-up to our meeting, we exchanged messages on an encrypted app. So he has gone into hiding, and is cautious about meeting strangers.

He is currently on trial in Moscow, accused of “knowingly spreading false information about the Russian army.” The likely sentence will be 15 years in a penal camp. In the nondescript lobby of a Berlin hotel, the author Dmitry Glukhovsky reflects on this history as he speaks about his own forced exile in Europe. In hindsight, this episode seems like an ominous foreshadowing of the reality facing many Russians today. They stayed in Europe, in most cases for the rest of their lives. In 1917 the artists were caught off guard by the October Revolution. Fokine and Balanchine choreographed pieces for the company, Nijinsky danced for them, Satie composed music, as did Stravinsky – the ballet company performed his masterpiece The Rite of Spring – Cocteau wrote libretti, while Bakst, Matisse and Picasso designed the sets.

BERLIN - 'It’s happened, the idiot has started a war.'įounded in 1909 by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes had been traveling all around Europe to perform.

Dmitry glukhovsky